Last Friday, Geert Wilders, the far-right leader of the Dutch Freedom Party, made his way to the Greek Embassy in the Hague. He went to deliver a blunt message for the country: Leave the Eurozone. He read a letter to reporters outside the building urging the financially embattled Greeks to abandon the Euro -- for their own sake and the sake of the other countries in the monetary union. He was then photographed holding up a blown-up replica of a 1.000- drachma note, the old Greek currency, just in case anyone had failed to grasp his not-so-subtle exhortation. A 47-year-old lapsed Roman Catholic, Wilders' radical views are a marked departure from the tolerant, consensus-seeking style that has typically characterized Dutch politics. He has described Islam as "fascist," compared the Quran to Mein Kampf , and campaigned for Islam's most holy text to be banned from the Netherlands. He is currently on trial in Amsterdam for inciting hatred. His Freedom Party, founded in 2004 mainly on an...

On Sunday, for the second week running, protesters gathered in the main squares of major cities across Europe to voice their opposition to the wave of austerity that is sweeping the European Union. Nowhere was the call to protest answered with greater enthusiasm than in Greece. In Athens, people swarmed into the city center for the 12th consecutive day. Some were packed into Syntagma Square, in front of the Greek Parliament, listening attentively to speakers chosen at random from the crowd. This modern-day agora has taken place every night. The rest, more than 100,000 according to estimates, overflowed into the surrounding streets. Strangers were conversing animatedly about the country's serious problems, many waving Greek flags but none sporting party or union banners. Vendors who have set up improvised stands in the area in the last couple of weeks provided them with everything from from souvlaki and corn cobs to beer. It was a cross between a political demonstration and a street...

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, head of the International Monetary Fund, right, with his attorney Benjamin Brafman, is arraigned Monday, May 16, 2011. (AP Photo/Emmanuel Dunand, Pool)

The arrest of the International Monetary Fund's chief, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, adds a further layer of uncertainly to the volatile mess that is the Eurozone's debt crisis. Earlier this month, Portugal became the third country to accept a bailout by the so-called troika of lenders -- the EU, the European Central Bank, and the IMF -- to the tune of 78 billion euros. Analysts have increasingly been probing Spain's ability to weather the storm that is clobbering the rest of Europe. But a year into the harsh austerity regime imposed by its lenders and nowhere near returning to the international bond markets, Greece is the place where the aftershocks of the Strauss-Kahn scandal are likely to be felt most keenly. In the long months of negotiations aimed at managing Greece's debt and avoiding a default that would have sent Lehman-like shockwaves throughout the world, Strauss-Kahn emerged as a towering figure. A socialist and former French finance minister with strong European connections,...